'People Don't Have To Cover Their Scars ... We're Normal'

KEEZLETOWN — At the pool, the campers are swimming. Some are taking scuba lessons, others are doing flips off the diving board or trying to catch a pass before plunging into the cool blue water.

No one is staring. Sean Canepa appreciates that. Sean is a burn survivor, just like the other kids who spent last week at Brethren Woods, home to this year's Mid-Atlantic Burn Camp.

Sean, a 13-year-old from Philadelphia, has severe burns over a large part of his face and back. And there he was, swimming without stares. "Where I'm from, there's not a lot of other people that are burned," he said. "I didn't think there were very many other burned people until I came to this camp. It's fun, and I like being with the other kids that are burned."

Gregory Hammett, a camp counselor, said that sentiment was what the camp was all about. A burn survivor himself, Hammett, 21, has been coming to the camp since he was 9.

"All the kids here are burn survivors, and a lot of them are really self-conscious of their burns, as I was," he said. "They don't have to worry about that here."

Now in its 19th year, the burn camp aims to help campers build self-esteem. It does that by removing the challenges campers face on an everyday basis -- the stares, the questions -- and replacing them with outdoor activities.

Some of those activities are challenging, Hammett said. This year, campers tried hang gliding, rode horses and took on a ropes course. "It challenges them in ways they're not normally challenged," he said. "They don't feel like they're burned, they feel like a regular kid because no one treats them differently."

The burn camp has 45 campers this year, said counselor Brent Miller, a firefighter from Ellicott City, Md. In years past, they've had as many as 60.

Nationally, fewer children are suffering severe burns, Miller said, as programs help kids learn what to do in a fire.

Most campers are city kids, Miller said, with heavy concentrations coming from Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Some have severe burns to their face and over much of their body, while others have burns easily covered by clothing. Either way, they're welcome.

"Everybody is treated the same, whether you have a 1 percent burn or a 100 percent burn," Miller said. "You're a burn survivor."

As a firefighter, working at the camp gives Miller a different perspective on burn victims. Usually, he sees victims only in the immediate aftermath of a fire.

"We don't see them recover," he said. "We just throw them in a helicopter and send them to the hospital."

Here, however, he gets to meet the kind of kids he saves. Talking to them is an inspiration, he said.

"You pull someone out of a burning building, and now they're here to tell the tale of it," he said. "A lot of these kids have heartbreaking stories."

Chaquon Whitfield, 17, doesn't have any memories of her story, but she tells it, anyway.

When she was 3, the Baltimore girl was burned on 68 percent of her body and lost a little brother and a cousin in a fire started by an exploding space heater.

Whitfield has had more than 25 surgeries, the most recent just last year.

Next year, she hopes to attend the prestigious Juilliard performing arts school in New York City. She wants to be an actress.

"I really, really want to," she said. "Why can't I be on TV, why can't I be in the movies?"

Whitfield's years at burn camp have helped her develop that confidence, Whitfield said.

"We have our own little world here," she said. "People don't have to cover their scars, people don't have to be ashamed. We're normal." *